He is the nicest right-wing evangelical powerhouse you've never heard of. Jim Daly grew up the last of five children in what anyone would call a broken home. His mother died when he was 10 and he lived with, in turn, a stepfather, a foster family, his own alcoholic father and his divorced brother. He came to Jesus in high school, under the guidance of a football coach. His recent memoir, "Finding Home," has barely made a dent on the best-seller lists. Nevertheless, in 2005, Daly got the job of president and CEO of Focus on the Family, and although he denies this, it's clear that he was picked to be the yin to James Dobson's yang. While Dobson continues to threaten in the press, Daly chats amiably with a reporter about the fall weather. He sticks to the hard line on policy issues—gay marriage is bad for families, he says—but his presentation is all soft edges. "I'm sure there are wonderful gay parents out there; there's a poster child for everything." If one of his boys turned out to be gay, he says, "I'd love him."

Is the presence of Daly at the head of what is arguably the country's most politically powerful conservative Christian group more evidence of a shift by evangelicals toward the center? Or is this alleged shift simply cosmetic? Events of the past few weeks offer contradictory evidence. On the one hand, you have Dobson, creating a furor with a New York Times op-ed warning Republicans to deliver a presidential candidate with the right values—or else. On the other, a handful of new books and studies show some movement centerward, at least on the question of tolerance toward homosexuals. According to a new study by the Barna Research Group, 80 percent of churchgoers between the ages of 16 and 29 believe that the term "anti-homosexual" describes Christianity, and they complain that they don't get enough guidance from their pastors in how to apply Christ's message of love to their gay friends. According to another study cited in "After the Baby Boomers" by Robert Wuthnow, young evangelicals have grown dramatically more tolerant of gays over the past 20 years on issues like teaching in schools.

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Imagine, if you will, a world in which the right-wing pundit Ann Coulter were not a grating opportunist who said horrible things on air for her own personal gain. Imagine--and it's a stretch--that she occasionally said something interesting or at least worth considering. Then her recent comments on Donny Deutsch's cable show might have generated a useful conversation instead a lot of name-calling and Scripture quoting.

Here is what happened: Coulter and Deutsch were bantering about Israel and Iran, when Coulter used the phrase that has gotten so much attention. Christians, she said, "just want Jews to be perfected."

"Wow, you didn't really say that, did you?" asked Deutsch.

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